Humbling in the name of January.

Once the excesses of a bloated fortnight in late December drift into yesterday, the cold and treacherous January arrives. With its annual increments in public transport costs and weighty resolutions, it is a time that sprinkles timidity atop even the strongest of characters.

Places of work and public carriages overflow with grimace and despair, and even the youth appear aged, with their talks of former triumphs during the December break and it is amidst such unified melancholy, that January humbles us all.

The Direct Debits we so casually played fool to have been taken, leaving most of us chasing zero in the pursuit of nullifying our newly acquired ‘DR’ status.

The long haul until payday means that our usual standard of existence is diminished, as our early seasonal pay is now in the hands of the doe-eyed lasses that man the checkouts in department stores up and down the country.

Yes, January is the month most humbling indeed.